In computer systems having integrated graphics processing circuitry located within a bridge device, such as a northbridge, display media, such as monitors or displays are sometimes driven directly from the bridge. For particular display devices operating according to the digital video interface (DVI) standard or high definition multi-media interface (HDMI) devices, which are digital standards, there are situations where it may be desirable to drive such display devices using a PCI express slot on the northbridge or any other suitable bus and memory bridge circuit. In particular, it may be desirable to directly drive HDMI and DVI display devices using the physical layer (PHY) of the PCI express interface in order to avoid the need for a dedicated physical layer (PHY) for DVI or HDMI displays, which would add area and a resultant cost to a northbridge chip. Directly driving HDMI and DVI display devices using the PCI express physical layer also would avoid the need for an external DVI or HDMI in coder chip. Additionally, if an HDMI or DVI display device is driven using the PCI express physical layer, there are several design considerations warranting that the interface be AC-coupled. However, the DVI and HDMI specifications, as currently defined, would dissuade driving a display device over an AC-coupled interface because a prohibitively large DC drift would result. This drift is due to two control characters using Transmission Minimized Differential Signaling (TMDS), which are issued, according to the DVI and HDMI specifications, during the horizontal and vertical blanking regions, these control characters not being DC balanced. It is noted that DC balancing results from the bits in the control character having either a greater or lesser number of ones than zeros. The effect of the lack of an equal number of one bits and zero bits is a DC imbalance on a differential interface, which may result in errors at the DVI or HDMI receiver, which is usually located within the display device.